Vatican I, Dei Filius: Pius IX's Prologue and Chapter 1 on God in Himself

Orientation #

He does not say what was done last time; he refers back to having spoken “before” about the three sources of the modern world and to “Book Nine” discussed “today” (the sense of “true”). He points forward: the introduction only “sets the stage” for the document proper, and “living” and “eternal” will be met later in the Summa’s order. The next class continues into chapter 1 on God’s simplicity, distinction from creation and free creative act. (The text-matching system reports a 10-minute match with Summa Theologiae I, q. 90; the transcript itself never names or reads that question, so it is not treated here.)

The class, in order #

1. Vatican I and Vatican II as “kind of one council” (“two dogmatic constitutions”) #

Point: Dei Filius is one of only two documents that got out of Vatican I, and both were continued by Vatican II.

• Vatican I interrupted by the Risorgimento; of its two documents, the one on the Church was cut down to papal infallibility, repeated in Vatican II’s constitution on the Church.
• Vatican II: 16 documents, 4 constitutions, 2 of them dogmatic (Church; Dei Verbum); Dei Verbum continues Dei Filius, but is more on Scripture, while this one takes the “more fundamental view” on faith and reason.
• Comparison: like historians presenting World War II as a continuation of World War I.
• Before ch. 1’s profession of faith there was in an earlier session a fuller profession: basically the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed with additions from Trent. The council looks back to Trent, not forward.

2. Pius IX’s opening: Christ’s promise and the fruits of Trent (“behold I am with you all days”) #

Point: the preamble grounds councils in Christ’s promise to be with the Church (end of Matthew, he supposes) and lists the benefits of Trent.

• Three things Christ does for his bride: assists her teaching, blesses her labours, helps her in danger.
• “Closer definition of dogmas and condemnation of errors”: he links this to Thomas beginning the Summa Contra Gentiles with the twofold office of the wise man (teach truth, refute error), which goes back to Aristotle.
• Pastoral fruits: discipline, seminaries (Trent “had a lot to do with” founding them), instruction, sacraments, union with the visible head (the Pope), vigour of the mystical body (“some people see as the best definition of the Church”; Pius XII’s encyclical, he thinks), religious orders (Counter-Reformation), missions.
• Aside: the phrase about ecumenical councils “sounds like John Paul II” always going back to Vatican II.

3. The evils: contempt for Trent and the collapse into sects (“the Spirit of Vatican II”) #

Point: the good was undone because Trent’s authority was held in contempt or its decrees neglected.

• Joke: the “Spirit of Vatican II” is not to read Vatican II; councils keep correcting the same abuses, like the average man confessing the same sins.
• Heresies that rejected the magisterium and made religion a matter for individual judgment “collapsed into a multiplicity of sects” (he recalls Borromeo, uncertainly, on the divisions); the devil practises divide and conquer.
• The Bible, claimed as sole source and judge, then ceased to be held divine and was assimilated to myth (German scriptural scholars).
• Argument from converts on EWTN: the Bible cannot stand alone, because how do we get these books as the books? Vatican II: magisterium, tradition, Scripture — no one stands without the others. “Three is enough, but one is not enough.” Image: three M1 rifles hooked together stand as a tripod; one or two fall.
• Aside: the U.S. News cover article on C. S. Lewis — his attempt to reduce Christianity to a myth and his frustration that it “couldn’t quite fit.”

4. Rationalism, naturalism and the appeal of pride (“the rule of simple reason or nature”) #

Point: rationalism (“sola ratio”) gives up belief altogether and reduces man to what he has by nature.

• Rationalism is “utterly opposed” to a religion of supernatural origin and shuts Christ out of minds and nations — his example: the yearly fight over “Happy Holidays” vs. Christmas (Walmart made to back down).
• The Manichaeans’ appeal to Augustine (from the John Paul II piece on Augustine he handed out): “just use your reason.” Its root is pride: Lewis at eight knowing he had good taste and the rest were philistines — true, but an occasion for pride, which he later recognized; and the “sinking feeling” when a scholar told him the evidence for the resurrection was pretty good.
• Aside on method: Fr. Hughes’s book on the twenty councils gives the circumstances of each; Vatican II on priestly training says start with the Bible, then the Fathers, then later history and councils. The Fathers and councils have an “ad hoc character”: Augustine’s many contra works, councils called when someone denies something (Christ’s divinity, Mary as Mother of God, Trent on sacraments because the Lutherans cut them down).

5. Pantheism, materialism, atheism, and why everything seems doubtful (“the abyss of pantheism”) #

Point: the denial of God plunges minds into pantheism, materialism, atheism — and ends by destroying reason itself.

• Pantheism is the characteristically modern one: Tocqueville (vol. 2, democratic customs’ influence on religion) says democratic customs suggest pantheistic notions, visible in French literature and German philosophy; the Enchiridion Symbolorum keeps correcting German theologians for it (Rahner, Küng); “the force be with you” is pantheistic; Einstein admitted his God was pantheistic. Materialism is “old as the hills.”
• “They set out to make reason supreme and end up denying reason”; the Church is now the only defender of reason’s ability to know.
• His three sources of the modern world (recalled): mercantile origin of the modern city; mathematical union of natural and technical science (17th–18th c.); democratic revolution and relative equality.
• Argument that doubt is intrinsic to experimental science:
  1. The hypothesis is freely imagined (Einstein), so it has no justification by itself.
  2. Confirmation by consequences is not a syllogism: “if A then B; B; therefore A” — if I am a dog I am an animal; I am an animal; therefore a dog. His logic-class example: if Burke dropped dead he’d be absent; he is absent; therefore he dropped dead — “wishful thinking, not logical thinking.”
  3. Einstein: Newton’s predictions made men think it true, then relativity predicted the same and more; so “you never know.” Claude Bernard: doubt is intrinsic to the experimental method. Conclusion: if that is the only reliable method, everything is doubtful. Democratic customs lead the same way: all equal, so my opinion is as good as yours, and they differ.
• Aside: the book on Florence he is reading, with the author’s opinion that everything should be doubted.

6. Diluted truth and the missed distinctions (“graduation was among the sacraments”) #

Point: even Catholics have their sensibility weakened, and the root is failure to see distinctions.

• Example: a friend’s confirmation class could not collectively name the seven sacraments; “graduation” was proposed — truth diluted so that any ceremony is a sacrament.
• “Confusing nature and grace” and “human knowledge and divine faith”: “the beginning of trouble for our mind is not seeing some distinction, or misunderstanding some distinction.”
• Church as Mother and Mistress (Mater et Magistra, John XXIII’s phrase): three stages — raise the fallen, steady those who stumble, embrace those who return; then strengthen the good.
• The Pope’s purpose: to teach and to condemn errors (“the two rules of the wise man”), with the bishops, relying on Scripture and tradition as expounded by the Church — the three again.

7. How chapter 1 is ordered: creeds vs. the Summa Contra Gentiles (“the order of the Summa Contra Gentiles”) #

Point: chapter 1 is a profession of faith, but ordered differently from the creeds, perhaps ad hoc for what is denied now.

• Two divisions of creeds: (A) Apostles’ and Nicene-Constantinopolitan: by Father (creation, appropriated), Son (incarnation and what follows), Holy Spirit (sanctification, last things); (B) Athanasian and Fourth Lateran (he thinks): by the divinity and humanity of Christ. Both good; three parts vs. two. Theology follows the twofold (Summa Theologiae: prima pars on God, tertia on the incarnation; also the Compendium), but Thomas follows the creed order when treating the articles under faith.
• Here, “with one little tiny exception,” the order is the Summa Contra Gentiles: God in himself (Book I), God as maker (Book II), God as end and ruler (Book III). His own small-print headings are his; the bold is the council’s text.
• The exception: “creator” already appears in the first part (“one true and living God, creator and Lord of heaven and earth”), though creator belongs to the second part.

8. Creator and Lord; “my body belongs to me” (“a piece of driftwood”) #

Point: God is Lord because he is creator.

• Argument a fortiori: a driftwood statue belongs to the man who carved it though he did not make the wood; God gives both form and matter; therefore I do not belong to myself but to God, who made my soul and my body.

9. “One, living, almighty, eternal, immeasurable” in the Summa’s order (“the way up and the way down”) #

Point: the attributes fall into the Summa Theologiae’s two treatises, substance of God and operations of God, and he explains why there are two.

• “True” here is not the sense of Book Nine treated today; “one” is the last (fifth) thing shown about God’s substance; “living” only comes with understanding and willing (operations); “almighty” likewise; “eternal” comes after showing God unchangeable; “immeasurable” (immensus, from mensurare; some derive mens, mind, from it because the mind measures) is like infinite, incomprehensible; “every perfection” is the second thing in the substance treatise.
• Why two treatises though substance and operation are one in God: we know God from creatures. Circle image: God the centre, creatures points on the circumference; what is one in God is many in creatures; knowing God from creatures goes in reverse. Heraclitus: the way up and the way down are the same, in different directions — procession is the way down, our knowing the way up. Two lines end at the same point; multiplicity is only in the creatures. In us, substance and operation differ: my substance and my understanding of the Pythagorean theorem are not the same, nor always together.
• Corollary: since divine substance, understanding and will are the same, if the substance is infinite, so are will and understanding.

His words #

• dogmatic vs. pastoral constitutions: Vatican II’s four constitutions, two of each kind.
• twofold office of the wise man: teach the truth, refute errors (SCG, from Aristotle); later “the two rules of the wise man.”
• mystical body of Christ: “best definition of the Church” for some.
• sola ratio: his gloss of “rationalism.”
• ad hoc character: of Fathers’ and councils’ teaching, answering particular denials.
• three sources of the modern world: mercantile city, mathematical experimental science, democratic revolution.
• “doubt is intrinsic to the experimental method”: Claude Bernard.
• Mater et Magistra: Mother and Mistress, John XXIII.
• immensus / mens: immeasurable; the mind as measuring.
• the way up and the way down: Heraclitus, applied to procession and knowledge of God.

Texts #

Read in class

• Vatican I, Dei Filius, Pius IX’s introduction (read through); ch. 1, opening sentence (“one true and living God, creator and Lord of heaven and earth … almighty, eternal, immeasurable … every perfection”).

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, prologue and the order of Books I–III.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I (treatises on God’s substance and operations; prima/tertia pars); Compendium of Theology.
• Vatican II: Dei Verbum, constitution on the Church, decree on priestly training (unnamed).
• Apostles’, Nicene-Constantinopolitan, Athanasian, Fourth Lateran creeds; Council of Trent.
• Matthew, close of the Gospel; St. Paul (God wills all to be saved) (both as he supposes).
• Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2; Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum; Augustine, Confessions and John Paul II on Augustine; Fr. Hughes on the councils; U.S. News article on C. S. Lewis; Einstein and Claude Bernard on method; “Book Nine” on truth (today’s other class).

His questions #

• Why is Dei Verbum a continuation of Dei Filius? Both are dogmatic constitutions on faith/revelation; Vatican I and II are “kind of one council.”
• Why can’t the Bible stand by itself? Because we need the magisterium and tradition to know which books are the books; three stand, one cannot.
• What does rationalism mean? Sola ratio: giving up belief and reducing to what man has by nature.
• Why is doubt intrinsic to the experimental method? The hypothesis is freely imagined and its confirmation by consequences is not a syllogism.
• To whom does the driftwood statue belong? To the maker; a fortiori I belong to God, who made soul and body.
• Why is God Lord of heaven and earth? Because he is creator.
• Why two treatises, on God’s substance and on his operations, if they are one in God? Because we know God from creatures, in which they are many; the way up reverses the way down.
• Where do “one,” “living,” “eternal” fall in the Summa’s order? One: last of the substance treatise; living: with understanding and will; eternal: after unchangeable.